That's assuming you get to keep or even touch the box. They could just provide it as a black box with a programming spec. You get to tell it to do things in the spec and get results, but you don't know what it does to get those results.

You can't interpret the results in a scientific way if you don't really know how the instrument works. You must know every piece to calibrate it etc. And think about an in flight anomaly. There may be a work around, but you don't know about it. No way. Better built your own instrument you know completely.

If the military wants to have it's toys exclusively, it has to pay for it by itself. In an ideal world they would share, but thats not the way the world turns these days. There are terrorists behind every planet and moon. Funny thing is: With enough money (flagship mission) the scientific community (in several countries) can build instruments with capabilities like MIDAS. Someday they will do so and money has been spent twice or more to reinvent the wheel. I don't even want to talk about ITAR again.

About the Ganymede orbiter: You are right, JRehling. Maybe there is an advantage in terms of lower radiation with this kind of mission compared to a Galileo like mission? But why spent this much fuel. You don't have close flybys of the other moons anymore. But in my defence: The presentation talked about Ganymede being an ideal vantage point. But heh, its a salesman presentation.

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